Book Reviews

The late Carlos Fuentes was a fluent English speaker — the product of being the son of a diplomat and his own careers in international academia and diplomacy. Here he is talking with Charlie Rose in February 2011. The interview captures the sense of how important politics was to Fuentes and the other writers of ‘El Boom’. The conversation is almost exclusively about politics past, present and future, touching on the drugs war, Cuba and U decline. Reference is also made to Garcia Marquez and his disagreements with Fuentes over the politics of the recent past. It is also fascinating, from the usually self-absorbed European perspective, to watch the two Americas sparring.

I’ve recently been going to bed with Alan Bennett. He’s a very comforting presence as I drift off to sleep, his gentle voice soothing me with tales of what he’s been up to that day, or sometimes anecdotes from his long and successful past. It’s a real treat, the last thing I hear before nodding off being his mellifluous Yorkshire tones relating a Peter Cook one-liner from 1963. I’m talking audiobooks, of course. There’s a nebulous point somewhere sleeping and wakefulness, a state where insomnia still reigns but you’re too tired actually to turn the light on and read. The solution? An audiobook. You get the hypnotic effect of a

The latest intellectual maverick to win the 2010 Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman, Laurent Binet certainly isn’t shy, especially when it comes to his literary tastes. A single paragraph in his debut — a postmodern take on Heinrich Himmler’s righthand man Reinhard Heydrich — reveals his position on Camus, Desnos, Flaubert, Hasek, Kafka, Marquez, Rimbaud and Hemingway among others. Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones is summarily dismissed as ‘Houellebecq does Nazism’. Binet’s next book, an account of Francois Hollande’s presidential campaign, is unlikely to be quite as provocative. He lets us know what’s on his book shelf. He tweets @laurentbinetH 1) What are you reading at the moment? Super Sad True

The Observer’s William Skidelsky has taken it upon himself to list ‘The 10 best historical novels’. The usual suspects are present: War and Peace, The Leopard, I Claudius and The Blue Flower. There are a couple of surprising inclusions, too: Eliot’s Romola, for instance. And, of course, there are some glaring omissions — of which, more later. Above all, though, Skidelsky’s subjective list suggests that historical writing is fashionable. He picks Wolf Hall at number 2 — a demanding book that may prove too demanding for future readers. And he also says a word for Andrew Miller’s Costa prize winning Pure — a slight book that may prove not demanding

Astrophil and Stella 1 Loving in truth, and fain my love in verse to show, That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain: Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know, Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain; I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe, Studying inventions fine her wits to entertain, Oft turning others’ leaves to see if thence would flow Some fresh and fruitful shower upon my sunburnt brain. But words came halting out, wanting inventions stay; Invention (Nature’s child) fled step-dame study’s blows: And others’ feet still seemed but strangers in my way. Thus great with child

There are so many axes being ground in Tom Watson and Martin Hickman’s fascinating and explosive new book, Dial M for Murdoch: News Corporation and the Corruption of Britain, that it should be handled with asbestos gloves and read behind protective goggles. The health warning that should be given before reading is that two of the most persistent and relentless pursuers of News International and all things Murdoch are Tom Watson and Chris Bryant, who, after contributing to the downfall of Tony Blair, became the targets of appalling intrusions into their personal lives, sometimes by illegal methods. If they hadn’t been so persistent, I doubt we would have the Leveson

T.S. Eliot once commented that “humankind cannot bear very much reality.” Reality, Reality, Jackie Kay’s latest collection of short-stories, explores the thin line that separates art and the supposed real world. In these 15 stories, 14 of which are written in an intimate first-person voice, Kay brings the reader on a journey with the lonely and dispossessed, as they try and comprehend their own perceived reality. In Mini Me, we follow ─ in a phonetic Scottish dialect ─ Patricia, a middle-aged woman who battles with her weekly dietary schedule; In Hadassah, Kay retells the biblical story of Esther in a modern setting, through the broken English of a prostitute who